


Another Night In Someone Else's Fantasy

by paperclipbitch



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Gen, M/M, this is more sad than cracky tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/pseuds/paperclipbitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Ariadne still isn’t sure how she got here, Eames has Issues with Colin Firth, Arthur isn’t as boring as he’s pretending to be, and the world is full of unimaginative people paying a fortune to get laid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Night In Someone Else's Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> [originally posted on LJ October 2010] I was trying to fill out an au_bingo card and this was supposedly for the 'prostitutes' square. So... cracky and angsty and dream!prostitutes!

**One.**

{ _Now she walks through her sunken dream  
To the seat with the clearest view._}

+

So: this wasn’t how Ariadne was planning on paying for college.

She should probably state that for the record.

+

Ariadne sips her coffee – much too strong, but she’s tired and she needs _something_ to keep her eyes open – and watches Arthur tapping the end of a red biro against his lower lip. He shouldn’t technically be looking at the brief this early on in the process, but Cobb is pretty relaxed about this kind of thing and it’s Arthur who’ll be working on this scenario, after all.

“Is it wonderfully perverted, darling?” Eames asks from where he’s lounging and smoking, shirt missing buttons and one shoelace undone. Ariadne has no idea how _that_ happened, since apparently the one upside of all this is that there’s no actual physical contact involved.

Arthur hums; she can’t tell if the sound is annoyed or merely thoughtful. Arthur is made up of too many subtleties, and Ariadne knows she’s still pretty new here but she’s not sure anyone’s ever seen all of him.

“I’ve seen worse,” Arthur offers at last, briefly putting pen to paper.

“Oh, haven’t you.” Eames’ voice is hard, amused, and Arthur’s shoulders stiffen, just slightly. 

Ariadne quickly turns her attention to the newspaper spread in her lap, the one she isn’t reading.

After a while, Arthur slides the brief back to her. He’s corrected the spelling and the grammar of their client, and that’s all he’s done. Ariadne bites down a laugh and when she glances at Arthur, his lips are curled in the smallest of smiles.

+

One downside of the job is watching a lot of porn. Like, a _lot_. That’s where their clients tend to get their ideas, after all; maybe they build on them, but the basis almost always starts in something they’ve watched or read.

Ariadne gets the mistyped emails, thick with intent lust, and it’s her job to peel apart the words and work out the setting to the last possible detail. They say they want a crimson boudoir, and it’s her job to build on that, to pick bits and pieces out of movies until the world’s most beautiful, most physically impossible and most slutty Parisian dressing room possible has been recreated. Most female clients want it to be inside some kind of elephant statue.

_Moulin Rouge_ has a lot to answer for.

“I’ve seen this one already,” Eames says from the doorway, as Ariadne watches yet another scene of a guy awkwardly fingering a girl by a deep blue swimming pool, hips tilted toward the camera. “There’s a twist at the end.”

Ariadne raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“No.” He laughs, soft, and then tips his head toward the screen. “Me or Arthur?”

“Arthur,” Ariadne says, as the woman onscreen lets out a particularly guttural false moan. “Water sex is like anti-gravity sex, right?”

Eames smirks. “Loosely.”

They watch in silence for a moment until the woman orgasms with a lot of camera-pleasing wriggles and shrieks, and then Eames sighs. “I’m going for coffee, want anything?”

“No, thanks,” Ariadne replies distractedly, already making notes. When she looks up, he’s gone.

Anyway, Ariadne builds the places, from sex al fresco in parks to balconies over fantastic cities full of strung lights, making them perfect and as close to the client’s wishes as she can imagine, and then she hands over the plans to Arthur and Eames. She gives them the stage but, after all, they are the actors. 

+

It’s impossible to say how many people Cobb has working for him; Ariadne works in her small square office with the view of a narrow Parisian street below her and doesn’t meet a whole lot of colleagues. Arthur and Eames and their clients are her sole responsibility; she’s their architect. She sometimes thinks that she’d like to meet another architect, to ask them if their life is as complicated and surreal as hers is, but the opportunity has never arisen and it’s not like she’s ever going to _ask_ Cobb.

Yusuf is in charge of pharmaceuticals and seems to find the whole thing hilarious.

“People come here for the fuck of a lifetime,” he told Ariadne once, when they were drunk late one night. “Who are we to deny them?”

It somehow sounds a little less sleazy when it’s put like that, and anyway, this isn’t _cheap_. Ariadne has overheard Cobb negotiating on the phone and so she knows that people pay thousands and thousands of dollars for something that, in the real world, only lasts about ten minutes.

“Have you ever tried it?” Yusuf asked her that night, alcohol in hand, smile lazy and soft.

Ariadne shook her head, feeling a blush tinge her cheeks. “Have you?”

Yusuf shrugged. “Yes. Not with either of your boys, but once, I did.”

Ariadne was curious, the world spinning around her head. “And what was it like?”

Yusuf laughed. “It was the fuck of a lifetime. But I wouldn’t do it again. Not even if someone else paid for me.” Ariadne frowned. “Do it more than once and I think you’d forget how to do it any other way,” he explained. His expression lightened. “Another round?”

+

Cobb apparently used to be really good at this, used to excel at giving people exactly what they didn’t even know they wanted. Then his wife died and now a shaky apparition of her appears almost every time Cobb dreams and tends to get homicidal.

A knife through the chest tends to ruin the mood, Ariadne has heard.

Maybe that’s why he employs people to do it for him; to build fantasy worlds to give paying clients the escapist sex fantasy they’ve always wanted. There’s no role-playing here; if you want to fuck after being strip-searched in a police investigation room, that can happen. If you want to be on a boat, on a plane, on a damn _cloud_ , that can happen.

Ariadne flickers her eyes over today’s print-outs. “Another zero-gravity guy,” she says, handing Arthur the details. He rolls his eyes.

“It _is_ your specialty,” Eames points out, with something like a smirk. Apparently you really have to know what you’re doing if you want to manage successful sex when there’s no gravity; if you’re not careful, it can end in concussion and a hell of a lot of mess. Ariadne doesn’t really want to think about it.

She hands Eames his first assignment, and he makes a soft noise of annoyance.

“Another fucking Darcy? _Seriously_?”

Eames can, with enough practice, fake being anyone – literally put on a false face, a false body and voice – but, as it turns out, most women want him to be Mr Darcy, emerging wet from a pond. 

(Once, Eames swore that if he ever met Colin Firth he was going to punch him in the fucking _face_.)

“These are both things you’re good at,” Ariadne points out, smiling slightly. “Shouldn’t be too much effort.”

Arthur cracks his knuckles while Eames sighs at this particular carefully-tailored Darcy fantasy – and Ariadne will never, _never_ admit that maybe she had her own while she was in her teens, because God knows Eames would tease her about it forever – and Ariadne taps her fingertips against her desk and tries not to feel too much like a pimp.

After all, that’s what they have Cobb for.

+

The work always seems to last longer than it really should do, and just because they mainly work with dreams it doesn’t make them any less exhausted after a long night at work. Ariadne has lost count of the number of hours she’s crashed in the little room designated as _theirs_ (considerably more badly-decorated than the rest of the building, of course), curled up on the couch with her teeth tasting like ugly hours of too much coffee. She often finds Yusuf there, dozing without the aid of pharmaceuticals, or Eames, spread out looking casually debauched even in slumber. Arthur doesn’t sleep in public; Ariadne sometimes finds herself wondering if he ever sleeps at all.

She puts her boys into the most intimate of situations but she really does know very little about them. It’s probably best this way, but Ariadne still feels sad about it, about all the things that she’s missing. That they’re all missing; Ariadne knows they trust her but they don’t know her either. They _can’t_.

Arthur’s with his final client of the night – someone with an office fetish, fucking over a photocopier and scattered sheets of paper over an industrial carpet, that kind of thing – so it’s just her and Eames listening to traffic on the road outside. It’s late and her head keeps drooping forwards before she jerks back into awareness.

“You should go home,” Eames tells her. “There isn’t really anything left for you to do here.”

“Mmmm,” Ariadne agrees, non-committal, flicking through the copy of French _Vogue_ that always ends up in here, though she’s yet to figure out who actually buys it.

Eames is still smirking the lazy grin he always wears for a few hours after being George Clooney (she sometimes wonders if they ought to pay copyright or something), though there’s something tired in his eyes.

“You don’t have to still be here,” he adds, and she raises her head because there’s an edge to his voice, something _more_ to it, and she knows what he’s talking about.

“Neither do you,” she replies, careful.

He shrugs. “I do. I’m running away from something. We all are.” 

Ariadne swallows. “I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are.” His smile is still George Clooney’s, not his own. “You went to architectural school in _Paris_. It’s not even a particularly prestigious college. You’re running, darling.”

_Vogue_ slaps loudly closed in her lap, and Ariadne tries to formulate a response that won’t tell him that he’s got a point.

**Two.**

{ _Prostitution is revolution;  
You can hate me after you pay me._} 

+

So: Eames has thought about being ashamed of how he earns his living, except that:

a) it is a _fuckload_ of money;  
b) he gave up on being ashamed a long, long time ago, and;  
c) it’s nothing he hasn’t done for money before, in real life and in a far cheaper cut of suit.

+

It isn’t being any given person’s personal living, breathing blow-up doll that bothers Eames, really; it’s that people are so fundamentally _unimaginative_.

“They really need to learn to dream bigger,” he sighs over the printout Ariadne has just handed him. Yet another man who doesn’t want to tell his wife that he’d actually much rather fuck a guy and so has organised the rendezvous in an expensive champagne-soaked hotel to happen in his own head instead of in person. It’d probably be cheaper to hire an actual physical male prostitute and a room in the nearest Hilton but Eames isn’t complaining; it’s easy money, after all, and he’d be able to do this in his sleep if it weren’t for the fact that he already _does_.

Arthur is frowning over his own brief, tackling all of this with a level of seriousness that makes Eames despair just a little. “Would you really be able to handle it if they dreamed bigger?” he asks dryly.

Arthur isn’t actually boring, though he apparently goes to great lengths to make it look like he is. Eames hasn’t asked why. They all have their personality flaws.

“I can handle _anything_ , dearest,” Eames responds, and if he’s a little more honest in the flirtation than it sounds like he is, well, that’s his little secret, isn’t it. Ariadne’s lips curl, just slightly, and she’s a nice girl but there’s a lot she doesn’t see; a lot she _can’t_ see, because she doesn’t know either of them well enough yet. 

It’s all right; Eames is starting to suspect that no one actually knows him anymore.

“Sex doesn’t _have_ to be breathtakingly creative,” Ariadne offers, while Arthur raises his eyes heavenward. The gesture is starting to seem increasingly fond as opposed to wearied, though, so it doesn’t have much sting.

“You’ve clearly been doing it wrong,” he informs her lightly, and she dips her head, lips twisting.

Arthur’s gone back to looking at his paperwork, a slight frown between his eyebrows. Eames thinks about provoking him a little, but doesn’t. Not today.

+

Dom Cobb is only untrustworthy in that he’s actually insane, but he’s got a good head for business and maybe that’s all you really need in these days where reality is becoming increasingly uncertain.

The way Eames sees it, he’s being paid real money to think about doing an act that will never happen in reality.

“It’s philosophical, really,” he remarks. “Also: no venereal diseases.”

Arthur’s lips quirk. They go for a drink sometimes – there’s a dreadful little Irish bar not too far from their building, so they’re drinking Guinness despite being Paris; there’s something wonderfully poetic about just how _awful_ that is, he thinks – mostly because, Eames suspects, Arthur has no one else to go for a drink with.

They’re not sure how many other people are on Cobb’s books; he employs others to do what they’re doing, but Eames has only ever met Arthur. He suspects that Arthur’s requested a transfer more than once, but he won’t give Arthur the satisfaction of asking.

“Is that the high point of our lives?” he asks soft and a little sharp, “no venereal diseases?”

Eames shrugs. “I like to think of it as an added bonus.”

When Cobb first hired him he did do a little soul-searching, because you can’t become an imaginary prostitute without doing some actual thinking about it, no matter how hard you try. What it all comes down to is what you can live with and what you can’t, and Eames is perfectly willing to fuck people in dream worlds of their (Ariadne’s) making, since there are far more dangerous jobs that require far more effort. Besides, this is somewhat classier than being a straightforward petty thief, and being a con artist was frequently enjoyable but required so much groundwork before the payoff.

Arthur looks more amused now. “You would.”

Someone who wasn’t Eames would probably say something like _and what’s that supposed to mean?_ but Arthur’s an enigma and asking him to clarify himself will never end well. Eames learned how to pick and choose his battles a long time ago.

“Of course I would,” he says, breezing by on confidence as he always does, “I’m a philosopher. I’m fucking _Nietzsche_.” He kicks the leg of Arthur’s chair for emphasis.

Arthur is smiling now, which shouldn’t make Eames feel as triumphant as it does. “Just for that, you’re buying the next round.”

+

“Well,” Ariadne says, “this is kind of soulless. And not at all sexy or romantic.”

Eames thinks about saying _welcome to my life_ but that would entail having to _care_ about things, which he doesn’t anymore. It’s made everything so much easier; more people need to select apathy as a life philosophy.

“Isn’t that your job?” he asks. “To put the romance in?”

Ariadne huddles into her coat a little more; they’re on the viewing platform at the top of the Eiffel tower, wind in their hair and far too many tourists taking photographs of each other all over the place. It’s a grey day, overcast, and Ariadne is doing research for a client who wants to have sex with Arthur on top of the Eiffel Tower. Eames is tagging along for reasons he’s not examining too closely.

She’s a good architect; much better than the last guy they had, who cut too many corners until Cobb fired him. That’s the official story, anyway; there’s more going on there, but Eames isn’t stupid enough to ask. His hands are dirty enough as it is.

“Maybe I’ll make it sunny,” she muses, half to herself, whipping a notebook of squared paper out of nowhere and jotting down a few thoughts. Eames wonders if she finds herself looking at _everything_ and trying to make a porn location of it these days, but isn’t curious enough to question her. “That kind of golden sunlight that makes everything feel like syrup. And I’ll clear out all the people too.”

Eames blinks, and before he can stop himself he’s seeing it; the place is quiet, the biting wind toned down to more of a gentle breeze, Arthur bathed in a soft, hazy glow of sunlight, head tipped back and eyes closed, lashes dark.

He bites down on his tongue until the images leave him alone.

“Champagne,” he says.

Ariadne nods, adding that down. She’s working in turquoise – Arthur’s colour in all her notes – and her lips are pursed in thought.

Eames actually meant that little kiosk in the tower that’s selling horrendously overpriced plastic flutes of champagne, but if Ariadne wants to add it to this crazed scenario their client with more money than sense is developing, that’s fine too. He leaves her scribbling in her notebook, the edges of the pages fluttering in the wind, and buys them each a glass of champagne, carrying them carefully back.

They toast to nothing and sip them, watching as a few feet away a man in a badly-cut suit drops to one knee, ring in hand. His girlfriend gasps, wide-eyed.

“It’s still soulless and not at all romantic,” Ariadne sighs. “Is there something wrong with us?”

Eames smiles slightly at her and sips at his champagne, bubbles against his teeth. “No,” he says, “there’s something _right_.”

+

Yusuf’s a cool guy, always up for a game of late night poker – and perfectly willing to overlook his losses when Eames can’t fight against nature and finds yet another ace concealed in his sleeve – and far more zen about all of this than the rest of them. The fact that he spends his life drugging expensive wines so that people can dream about having sex and paying a small fortune for the privilege doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

He’s playing around with chemicals when Eames drops casually into his lab, less than an hour until his first client, but he’s done so much bending over and moaning like it means something that he doesn’t need a whole lot of mental preparation.

“What are you doing?” he asks, flicking a vial with his fingernail, glass ringing out in the room.

Yusuf rolls his eyes and comes over to take the equipment away from him. “Don’t touch anything, I have a new compound I need to get ready for next month.”

“Oh?” Eames raises an eyebrow.

Yusuf smirks. “Cobb’s organising an orgy in a few weeks.”

“Office bonding activity?” Eames suggests. Yusuf laughs, bright and real. “I can’t believe he’s having an orgy _without_ me. It seems rude I didn’t even get an invitation.”

Yusuf raises an eyebrow at him, a gesture that he has clearly stolen from Arthur. Arthur wears it better, too, but Eames decides to exercise tact and keeps this observation inside his head. 

“Different team,” Yusuf says at last. “And no, I’m not telling you who they are, before you ask.”

Eames shrugs. None of them have surnames anymore, except for Dom; this isn’t exactly legal, after all, and a lack of last names could save them all from prosecution if the police ever decide to sweep in. Not that they ever will; Cobb has found a convenient number of legal loopholes, and no one’s really fucking anyone. Is it still prostitution if the sex you’re being paid for never actually took place?

It’s kind of a bit like the whole _if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear it, does it make a sound?_ thing.

“A boy can dream,” is all he says aloud.

“Yes he can,” Yusuf agrees, eyes on his chemicals, “he really can.”

+

It’s one of those questions that should be innocuous and isn’t, and Eames can see in Ariadne’s eyes that she’s worked this out just a little too late. It isn’t her fault, not really; everyone’s got their tipping points and really, there are so many conversational landmines in this business that it would be impossible to name them all.

Eames gets around this by exploding as many as possible, but that route isn’t for everybody.

Her orange pen – Arthur’s colour again; far too bright and cheerful, but that’s Ariadne’s decision, after all – is bleeding onto the paper, and she’s still staring between the two of them, not retracting the question but not repeating it either.

“Three months,” Eames replies calmly, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of and Ariadne deserves an answer. “It’s been three months since I had physical sex.”

She nods, cheeks a little flushed, but she seems a little relieved now he’s answered her.

Arthur is staring at a copy of _Le Monde_ spread out in his lap, saying nothing. He doesn’t look particularly calm, but then Arthur _never_ looks particularly calm. He’s going to have a heart attack in about five years if he doesn’t loosen up a little; not that Arthur appreciates it when Eames points this out. 

Ariadne’s phone goes off and she darts a guilty glance at Arthur before she answers it, hurrying from the room and closing the door behind her.

“So, how long _has_ it been for you?” Eames asks, once they’re alone.

Arthur’s face is perfectly still in that way it only is when he’s really, genuinely angry, his mouth a thin straight line. “Don’t.”

“I’m guessing it’s been a while then,” he says.

“ _Don’t_.”

Arthur’s shoulders are rigid, his whole body a coiled spring. He’ll either implode or kill Eames; it’s kind of a toss-up which. The best part is the part where Eames doesn’t even have a preference.

“Explains a lot, really,” Eames says easily. “Clearly what you need is a good, hard, actual _fuck_.”

When Ariadne comes back in, Arthur is still reading the paper, the knuckles of his right hand stained dark red. Eames can feel his left eye swelling closed, but he doesn’t give Arthur the satisfaction of leaving the room.

He knows that he’s right, after all.

**Three.**

{ _I won’t be your concubine:  
I’m a puppet, not a whore._}

+

So: Arthur could be so much more than this.

He just doesn’t tell anyone that, and he’s beginning to suspect he no longer knows how to walk away. Reality doesn’t seem to have all that much to offer anymore.

+

Ariadne is hooked up, fast asleep, with an open folder of notes lying beside her. Computer print-outs, carefully annotated in purple and green; Eames’ colours, not his. Ariadne has a system that she takes very seriously, and Arthur likes that; with things as messy as they are, it’s always nice to find bastions of tidiness. Ariadne takes all of this very seriously, organising things as carefully as she can when the majority of all this happens in dreams, in the metaphorical instead of the literal.

He thinks about it for a moment, then unwinds his own wire and plugs himself in, dropping easily into sleep.

“Hey.”

Ariadne’s hair is wound carefully up behind her head to keep it out of the way, loose tendrils escaping to brush against her cheeks. The room is bathed in rich, golden sunlight; far more bright and forgiving than real sunlight ever is. Ariadne might be an architect for buildings, but she’s amazing at lighting.

“What’s this for?” he asks, walking over to join her.

“Castle,” she explains, waving a hand and an entire wall peels away. Arthur watches her concentrate, replacing the wall, moving windows until she’s happy, adding heavy, rich tapestries to the decor.

“Knights and castles?” he guesses, when she stops concentrating so hard and smiles in something like triumph.

“It’s all very homoerotic,” Ariadne explains. “Besides, it’s movie medieval the guy wants, it’s not like there needs to be any historical accuracy here.”

The bed is already in place, heaving with silks and pillows. Arthur glances at it and, almost involuntarily, he can see Eames spread across it, an expanse of bare skin drenched in gold.

He swallows and looks away.

“It’s nice,” he says, and his voice mercifully doesn’t sound as strangled as it feels, “you’ve done a good job.”

Ariadne gives him a thoughtful, unreadable look. “Thanks,” she replies at last.

+

Arthur can recall, perfectly, telling Cobb that he was crazy when he and Mal first came up with this whole scheme. That prostitution was prostitution no matter whether it was taking place in their heads or in actual hotel beds, and that it wasn’t a legitimate use of this technology or of dream worlds in general.

What he can’t recall, no matter how hard he tries, is how he came to get involved himself.

Eames is drinking coffee, the skin around his left eye still an ugly, unhealthy green. Arthur thinks about feeling guilty about punching him, but he doesn’t, not really, and anyway, the clients never see them in person. It’s something Cobb has always made sure of; the client is unconscious before they’re both hooked up, and the dream always ends for Arthur a few seconds earlier, giving him time to disconnect and walk out. That layer of security is helpful, reassuring, and probably the only sensible aspect of this whole stupid thing.

“So, what do you have this evening?” he asks, an attempt at bridge building because he can never quite work out how he feels about Eames but they have to work together and anyway, no one else in Arthur’s life actually understands like Eames can.

Eames looks up and doesn’t look surprised because he is, after all, a master of his own facial expressions. Arthur is too, but he likes to think he doesn’t appear to be quite so _smug_.

“Two fucking Darcys and something pretty straightforward and physically improbable in the backseat of a vintage car,” Eames shrugs.

Arthur remembers the days of Eames learning the finer points of Colin Firth’s performance of Darcy, the repetitive viewings of _Pride and Prejudice_ – because, somehow, get it even slightly wrong and the women will _know_ – and he’s seen it a few too many times himself by now. He supposes he should count himself lucky that he’s never had to learn how to disguise himself in a dream.

“Doesn’t sound too bad,” he says, trying for easy, normal.

Eames’ expression says something like _this conversation is remarkably similar to watching paint dry, darling_ as he nods in agreement. Eames makes no secret of the fact he thinks that Arthur’s boring; Arthur can no longer tell how much is self-defence these days.

+

“How did the Eiffel Tower go?” Eames asks, tone much too light. Arthur is immediately suspicious.

Ariadne mentioned that Eames tagged along on her research trip. Arthur remembers thinking that taking the elevator up the Eiffel Tower was a much more acceptable social activity than watching porn together; he’s lost count of how much time he’s spent watching porn of dubious origin and even more dubious quality with freshly-microwaved popcorn while Eames makes disparaging remarks about everything from the dreadful acting to penis sizes, while Ariadne giggles and makes worrying amounts of notes in different marker pens.

“Good,” he says, because that was something new and enjoyable; Ariadne sanded off all the reality from the situation and made it into something sexy and romantic and not at all kind of weird and a little sleazy. Most of his dream sexual experiences have blurred into one by now, but he remembers that. He clears his throat; they can do small talk. Of course they can. “How did the castle thing work out?”

Eames looks momentarily surprised – they haven’t ever discussed that one; they don’t always share all their assignments – but he covers it quickly and well. “Same old same old. And the guy kept insisting on speaking in this _awful_ fake English accent, which would’ve ruined the mood if there’d been one to ruin.”

Arthur allows himself a smile; Eames is right, after all. There’s never any ambience, never any emotion tied to this sex, though they fake it well enough. Arthur has never blurred that line, never convinced himself that any of it means anything. It doesn’t; it never will. If he forgets that then he’s lost, lost deeper than even Cobb is by now.

“Jesus, it _has_ been a while, hasn’t it?” Eames says, looking straight at him as though reading more than Arthur wants him to. “You’ve actually forgotten what proper sex is like. That’s just _tragic_.”

It isn’t, by the way. Arthur is just bored of being surrounded by fake sex and all its permutations, and he’s too exhausted for real sex these days. It would probably be shitty anyway; most things are, once you’ve tried out their dream counterparts.

Before he can say anything, either to defend himself or to try and condemn Eames, Ariadne enters the room, a folder in her arms and a set of coloured pens held in her mouth. She glances between them and must see something because a crease like understanding spreads across her face, though she doesn’t clarify for them. She sets everything down, dropping onto the couch.

“New client emails from Cobb,” she says brightly. “Anyone interested?”

Arthur finds himself sort of despairing for humanity when he reads through them, but he thinks Ariadne does too, so he doesn’t point it out. “Sure,” he says, reaching for sheets of paper and a red biro.

+

“The way to deal with this _amazing_ unresolved sexual tension that’s permeated our entire working environment and made social interaction of any kind virtually impossible is to actually resolve it, you know,” Eames says.

His smile is slightly less cynical than usual, slightly less cruel. There’s something genuine in there, in amongst his variety of lies, and Arthur isn’t sure what to do with that. Eames is complicated, and Arthur is complicated too, but at least he’s familiar with his own complications.

Arthur considers his words for a moment. “You want to have sex.”

Eames smiles a little wider; there’s an edge of uncertainty beneath the confidence, and Arthur isn’t sure that anyone else could spot that edge but him by now. It’s a strange realisation, and it’s enough to keep him from walking away.

“You need it, sweetheart,” Eames informs him. “And I’m perfectly amenable to finding out why Cobb hasn’t fired you yet.”

“Are you insane?” Arthur asks, before he can stop himself.

“Glass houses,” Eames informs him with a vague wave of his hand. “We’ve got an hour before our adoring public arrive, what do you say?”

The rooms are pretty clinical, given what happens in them; a double bed that’s comfortable but not particularly luxurious, their machine, and a lamp. That’s about it. Arthur looks around them, thinks about what a stupid idea this is, and says: “well, we’d only need about five minutes under, I guess.”

It’s more than he wants to give, an admittance of more than he feels comfortable admitting to. Arthur thinks a concession like that isn’t one Eames will ever give back, but he can’t do anything now, so he just stands and stares and waits.

“No,” Eames says, soft, and there’s a rough undertone to the glossy honey of his voice that Arthur has never heard before. “No, we’ll need that hour, because we’d be doing this in real time.”

Arthur stops himself from sucking in a shocked breath because he’s got to stay calm here, got to stay in control of most of this conversation.

“You want to have _actual_ sex?”

“I want it to be different,” Eames tells him, hard and quiet. He reaches, fingers curling around Arthur’s wrist, and Arthur shouldn’t but he lets him. Eames has lost his shining smooth self-confidence, and it’s _fascinating_. “I want to fuck you and I want there to be noises and sweat and bodily fluids without one of Ariadne’s custom lighting schemes, and I want you to go to your client and lie down next to them still _aching_ from me, ok?”

It’s tempting; more tempting than Arthur will ever be able to confess to. He can picture it now, though he can’t _imagine_ it; it’s been years without actual physical sex and much as he hates to admit it, he’s forgotten what the sensation feels like. It’s like dreaming; he’s lost the ability to do it. 

He looks at Eames’ eyes, filled with something dark and unnameable, and wants to agree to it so hard that something stings in his chest.

“No,” he says, pulling his arm away. “No.”

He doesn’t look back, slamming the door behind him.

+

Arthur does own a car, but he doesn’t want to be alone with his own thoughts tonight, so he heads straight for the métro. The trains are still running, though they won’t be for much longer; the station is quiet, and no one looks at him as he walks past, hands in the pockets of his trench coat.

Eames is at the other end of the platform, gaze on the tracks. He’s wearing what seems to be his default expression; the one that claims he knows a secret about the world that he isn’t telling you, but he might give you a clue if you offered the right kind of price. He hasn’t noticed Arthur yet, and for a moment he contemplates just turning around and leaving, letting this go.

But they’ll never let it go; they’re both stubborn men who take this far too seriously, though Eames pretends not to and Arthur is tired of being the _sensible_ one here.

“That was one way of solving the sexual tension,” Eames remarks, looking up when Arthur gets close enough. “Turning it into something resembling resentment instead. Nice work.”

“How many stops away are you?” Arthur asks, because he’s never found out where Eames lives. It’s never been necessary before.

“Eight,” Eames says, tipping his head to one side.

“Well, I’m five,” Arthur replies, “so I guess it’s my place.”

Eames tips his head to the other side. “Is this your very dull, geographical way of propositioning me?” he enquires. “Because mine was more exciting and actually had the word ‘fuck’ in it. For all I know you’re going to invite me back to look at your tie collection.”

“I can retract the offer,” Arthur tells him.

“Don’t do that,” Eames shrugs, “I’ve got an appointment tomorrow who wants to pretend I’m the CEO of a corporation he’s trying to buy out and wants to discuss business while we shag.”

“Wow,” Arthur says dryly, “I must seem thrilling in comparison.”

He’d thought Eames’ regular smiles were dirty, but he’s never seen anything as filthy as the smirk Eames throws at him now. “We’ll get you there, darling.”

Arthur would be more worried, but he has the feeling this has always been inevitable. He glances around them; at the vivid but not harsh light of the métro station, the lack of general public, and would swear it was put together by Ariadne. But there’s chewed gum on the posters and the air is stale and there’s a drunk guy at the other end of the platform mumbling to himself, so it’s almost definitely real. 

There’s a roaring sound as the train appears at the other end of the tunnel, and an artificial wind whips around them both; Eames leans in and kisses him, and Arthur reflects that maybe they’ve both been trained a little too well in the art of finding the exact perfect moment. Eames tastes like cheap bad coffee and his lips are chapped and they’ll have to break apart in a moment and try to keep their hands off each other for an entire train journey, but none of it’s enough to stop Arthur from kissing back anyway.

Maybe there’s still something to be said for reality after all.

+


End file.
